For Physicians & Medical Groups · Chicago
Entity formation under the Medical Corporation Act, the corporate-practice doctrine navigated rather than feared, MSO agreements that hold up, physician employment and covenants, HIPAA, and AI scribes governed properly, by counsel who has served inside MSO/PC structures as in-house general counsel and privacy officer.
Counsel with fifteen years of legal experience, including in-house roles at multi-site healthcare organizations: MSO/PC structures, IDFPR-regulated professionals, real audits.
How we help
Bundle quoted in writing
Medical corporation, PC, or PLLC, chosen for your tax posture and partnership plans, structured for corporate-practice compliance, and paired with the day-one HIPAA package, vendor BAAs, payor-credentialing sequencing, and a 12-month compliance calendar.
Retainer or project
Building or joining an MSO: we draw the line the doctrine requires, clinical judgment and clinical employment on the PC side, administration on the MSO side, management fees defensible as fair market value, and document it so the structure survives a payor audit or a dispute.
Project
Employment agreements, compensation models (wRVU, collections, salary-plus), call obligations, and restrictive covenants scaled to what Illinois courts actually enforce, on either side of the table.
Project
Practice sales, asset vs. equity structures, medical-records custody and transfer, tail-coverage allocation, and the diligence that finds the problem before closing rather than after.
Retainer
AI scribes and clinical tools folded into your HIPAA risk analysis, HB 3773 notices for AI touching employment decisions, and the monthly written governance report: regulatory monitoring as the product.
Common questions
It’s the rule that unlicensed persons and ordinary corporations may not practice medicine or employ physicians to do so. Illinois recognizes exceptions, most prominently the licensed-hospital employment exception the Supreme Court confirmed in Berlin, and permits physician-owned entities and properly structured MSO arrangements. It matters most when investors, management companies, or non-physician partners enter the picture: that’s when structure decides legality.
Not the clinical practice itself. The lawful architecture keeps the professional entity physician-owned while a management company provides administrative services for a fee. The enforcement risk concentrates in three clauses: who hires and fires clinicians, who controls clinical policy, and how the management fee is calculated. We review or build those three clauses first.
The honest answer: an AI scribe is a business associate handling ePHI, so compliance depends on your BAA, the vendor’s actual safeguards, and whether the tool is inside your security risk analysis. “The vendor says it’s HIPAA-compliant” is a marketing sentence, not a control. We turn it into contract terms and a risk-analysis entry.
Illinois gives physicians several vehicles: medical corporation, professional corporation, professional-purpose LLC. The right one turns on tax elections, how you’ll admit partners, and whether an MSO layer is coming. The entity is a 30-minute decision once those three questions are answered, and a multi-year problem if answered by default.
These answers are general information, not legal advice; your facts control. Statutes cited should be verified as current.
45 minutes. Your structure, your gaps, and what we’d do first, with or without us. We’ll gladly sign your NDA.
Request My Gap Briefing